Last week’s column asserting that the president is unelectable has triggered strong responses. Democrats, in particular, seem to think my judgment is premature. It strikes them as ridiculous that anyone could make such a “bold prediction” so far in advance of the 2012 election. Hey, that’s what we do, as seasoned political professionals, as pollsters. But I must stress that I am not so much making a personal prediction as drawing an informed conclusion based on all the numbers available. I do this in each election cycle for other candidates, and it’s time to make the call on President Obama.

Whenever I have an incumbent client running for reelection, I insist on a viability study about a year out from the election — so, in the case of the presidential race, right about now. Anything that I do for my own, I should do for the opposition. So here goes. First, I look at the polling results from traditional “deserves reelection” questions, the gold standard of viability testing. The most recent nationwide public poll I could find was one conducted by Quinnipiac University early last month. It showed 42 percent saying the president deserves reelection while 54 percent say he doesn’t. While this reelect number by itself is not necessarily a doomsday figure, it’s the 54 percent on the con side that’s a killer. Most often, there is a large undecided percentage, but here it’s only 4 points. Voters have closed their minds — and the book on this president. It ensures that when Obama faces a Republican nominee, the undecided voters in early polling will eventually vote against an undeserved reelection.

The second numbers I peruse are perceptions of accomplishments. Eventually, Republicans will ask voters, “What has Barack Obama really accomplished?” and he must answer. A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in his first year found that only 14 percent of all voters felt he had accomplished “a great deal ” during his initial nine months in office, his “salad days.” I cannot find evidence that the same question has been asked lately, but is there any chance that the result would be much different? In its Moving America Forward manifesto, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says Obama, with help from congressional Democrats, has five accomplishments: created private sector jobs, reduced debt, kept taxes low, passed a healthcare plan and reformed Wall Street. That’s the group’s best list. Do you think most Americans believe Obama has accomplished those things? Aside from passing a healthcare plan, he has done almost none of that, in the public’s mind. According to the latest AP polling, conducted in mid-October, the president’s average approval rating across those five areas is 42 percent. Obama brings no record of genuine accomplishment to his bid for reelection.

The third set of determinative data for an incumbent is perception of the direction of the nation or state. Everyone knows this is the biggest problem for Obama. The latest CBS/New York Times poll has the “right direction” at 21 percent. It hasn’t been above 30 percent since the early summer. Incumbents simply don’t get reelected when three-fourths of the electorate see things “seriously off” on the “wrong track.” Even if Obama’s approval ratings or likability were better, he could not overcome the negative sentiment that demands a change in direction. Americans are going to demand and get change next November.

So Obama fails on all counts. The numbers say that voters don’t think he deserves reelection, he has no meaningful accomplishments, and the nation is headed off in the wrong direction under his watch. He is simply not viable by any measure. That’s an empirically informed, hard-nosed judgment. This isn’t a movie or fantasy tale where a miracle occurs at the last moment to save the day. If Democrat campaign professionals don’t start acknowledging the same, and intervening, they risk Obama bringing down their entire ticket.

David Hill is a pollster that has worked for Republican candidates and causes since 1984.

Posted byCNN Political UnitWashington (CNN) - President Barack Obama's overall approval rating remains in the mid-40s, where it has been since July, and he continues to receive much higher marks for foreign policy than for domestic issues, according to a new national survey out one year before he is up for re-election.

A CNN/ORC International Poll released Tuesday indicates that 52% of all Americans approve of how the president is handling the situation in Iraq, an indication that Americans tend to favor Obama's decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from that country by year's end. Forty-eight percent of those questioned approve of how he is handling the war in Afghanistan. By contrast, only 35% have a positive view of his economic track record, and just 38% approve of how he is handling health care policy.

Full results (pdf)

It all adds up to an overall 46% approval rating for the president, with 52% saying they disapprove of how Obama is handling his job in the White House.

"That's par for the course for Obama, whose overall approval rating has been hovering in the mid 40s in every CNN poll conducted since June," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

In comparison to recent incumbents running for re-election, Obama's 46% approval ranks above only Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford - who both lost their re-election bids - in November of the year before an election. Most incumbents who were re-elected had an approval rating above 50% a year before the election. But George W. Bush, at 50%, and Richard Nixon, at 49%, also won re-election, and Bush's father George H.W. Bush had a 56% approval rating yet lost to Bill Clinton the following year.

"Translation: while the approval rating is an important indicator of a president's strength, it is not a foolproof predictor of election results," Holland said.

See how Obama's number stack up.

The poll indicates that the standard partisan divide over the president remains, with three-quarters of Democrats giving Obama a thumbs up but only 15% of Republicans approving of the job he's doing in office. By a 54%-42% margin, independent voters disapprove of how the president's handling his duties.

Women are divided on how Obama's performing, but men disapprove by a 55%-43% margin. White Americans give Obama a thumbs down by a 61%-36% margin, with non-white Americans give the president a thumbs up by a more than 2-1 margin.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from November 11-13, with 1,036 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

President Obama should abandon his run for a second term and turn over the reins of the Democratic Party to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, two one-time Democratic pollsters wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal, which appeared online Sunday.

Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen argued that just as Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson decided not to pursue additional runs though they could have, Obama should do the same.

“He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,”Caddell and Schoen wrote.

Caddell, who worked as a pollster for President Jimmy Carter, and Schoen, who was a pollster for President Bill Clinton, argue that Obama will inevitably have to run a negative campaign in order to win reelection, the negative consequences of which will make it difficult for him to govern effectively.

The majority of Americans will sit down together tomorrow to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving, though for many there is little to be thankful about. Unemployment remains stuck above 9%, 14 million Americans are still out of work, the nation’s debt is at a record $15 trillion, and the government is so dysfunctional that Congress can’t seem to agree on the time of day.

While President Obama is not exclusively to blame for the God-awful “mess” the country finds itself in, a CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday demonstrates that one demographic—white blue-collar Democrats—has so soured on his presidency that nearly half would prefer their party nominate a different candidate to run in 2012.

The poll also shows that Obama’s approval rating has plummeted from 76% shortly after his election in 2008 to 44% now, while his disapproval—23% then, 54% now—has taken the opposite turn.

Finally, the survey shows that a combined 53% of respondents oppose Obama’s health care law, while 38% favor the law. What is striking about this statistic is a secondary split among those who oppose it. Thirty-seven percent claim the law is too liberal, while 14% say it is not liberal enough. The clear suggestion is that the president, who has straddled the fence on many issues, has alienated voters from the other end of the ideological spectrum while simultaneously failing to win over those at his own end.

The majority of Americans will sit down together tomorrow to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving, though for many there is little to be thankful about. Unemployment remains stuck above 9%, 14 million Americans are still out of work, the nation’s debt is at a record $15 trillion, and the government is so dysfunctional that Congress can’t seem to agree on the time of day.

While President Obama is not exclusively to blame for the God-awful “mess” the country finds itself in, a CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday demonstrates that one demographic—white blue-collar Democrats—has so soured on his presidency that nearly half would prefer their party nominate a different candidate to run in 2012.

The poll also shows that Obama’s approval rating has plummeted from 76% shortly after his election in 2008 to 44% now, while his disapproval—23% then, 54% now—has taken the opposite turn.

Finally, the survey shows that a combined 53% of respondents oppose Obama’s health care law, while 38% favor the law. What is striking about this statistic is a secondary split among those who oppose it. Thirty-seven percent claim the law is too liberal, while 14% say it is not liberal enough. The clear suggestion is that the president, who has straddled the fence on many issues, has alienated voters from the other end of the ideological spectrum while simultaneously failing to win over those at his own end.

Among households where someone owns a gun, just 17% Strongly Approve of the way President Obama is performing his job. Fifty percent (50%) Strongly Disapprove for a Presidential Approval Index rating of -33.

The president does much better in households without a gun owner. In those homes, 26% Strongly Approve and 30% Strongly Disapprove for a Presidential Approval Index rating of -4.

Biden Poised to Play Key Campaign Role in Battleground StatesPublished November 26, 2011FoxNews.com

Vice President Biden could take on a critical role in the 2012 campaign, stumping in battleground states where President Obama has fallen out of favor among core constituencies.

Democrats reportedly are working on a plan to send Biden out to the three major political battlegrounds of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Those states are key to any presidential victory, and states Obama won in the 2008 election. But recent polling from those states shows the president just about tied with potential Republican challengers in the 2012 election, and voter attitudes toward the president souring.

Biden could represent the kind of profile the Obama campaign needs. Whereas Obama has at times struggled to connect with white working-class voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Florida's major Jewish constituency, Biden has deep ties to both groups. His pro-Israel credentials come from his many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he frequently stresses his blue-collar upbringing in a Catholic family from Scranton, Pa.

A Democratic official told The Associated Press that Biden has been working the phones with prominent Jewish groups and Catholic organizations in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Plus he's already made visits to those states.

A Democratic strategist with strong ties to the Obama White House told Fox News it's unlikely Biden will campaign in those three states as a substitute for Obama.

"This isn't like '92, when Clinton worked the North, Midwest and West while Gore campaigned in South," the strategist said. "Bottom line is Obama needs to win in those states, Biden can't win it for him."

However, the strategist said Biden "is an asset in those states and more."

"The value of Biden is highest on the campaign trail. Hearing him talk about his father's struggles with unemployment when he was a kid is compelling and resonates with average Americans. He'll be a key part of (the) campaign in key states," the strategist said.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen said the white working class is arguably the most important demographic in the 2012 election, particularly in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Michigan.

"I think the key demographic group is the white working class Democrats," Rasmussen told Fox News on Saturday. "They voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries in 2008 over Barack Obama. They voted for the president in the 2008 general election, and they voted for Republicans the last time around."

Rasmussen said recent polling shows "the race will be close."

Indeed, polls over the past month show neither party necessarily has the edge in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.

A PPP poll showed Obama's approval rating has suffered severely in Pennsylvania. The poll, released earlier this week, put his approval at 42 percent, with 53 percent disapproving of his job performance. However, the poll still showed him tied with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 45 percent each. The poll of 500 Pennsylvania voters was taken Nov. 17-20. It had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

A Rasmussen poll released last Sunday showed Romney leading Obama slightly in Florida. The poll put Romney at 46 percent among likely voters, with Obama at 42 percent. When matched up against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who in several recent GOP primary polls has seized the lead away from Romney and businessman Herman Cain, Obama was leading by just 2 points. The poll of 500 likely voters was conducted Nov. 17 and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

A set of Quinnipiac University polls conducted two weeks ago also reflected a tight race in those three states, at least when Obama was matched up against Romney. The polls showed Obama slightly ahead in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and Romney slightly ahead in Florida.

Biden mentioned at a fundraiser in late September that the campaign was working on its battleground state strategy.

At the time, Biden said the campaign was preparing to compete in 12 battleground states. He described Obama's campaign operation as "the best presidential ground game that's ever been put together in the history of presidential politics."

Biden is also targeting organized labor, speaking frequently with union leaders in Ohio ahead of a vote earlier this month on a state law that would have curbed collective bargaining rights for public workers. After voters struck down the measure, Biden traveled to Cleveland to celebrate the victory with union members.

And while Obama may have declared that he won't be commenting on the Republican presidential field until there's a nominee, Biden is following no such rules. He's calling out GOP candidates by name, and in true Biden style, he appears to be relishing in doing so.

During a speech last month to the Florida Democratic Convention, Biden singled out "Romney and Rick", criticizing Romney for saying the government should let the foreclosure crisis hit rock bottom, and hammering Texas Gov. Rick Perry's assertion that he would send U.S. troops into Mexico.

And he took on the full GOP field during an October fundraiser in New Hampshire, saying "There is no fundamental difference among all the Republican candidates."

Democratic officials said Biden will follow in the long-standing tradition of vice presidents playing the role of attack dog, allowing Obama to stay out of the fray and appear more focused on governing than campaigning.

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretence of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics.

The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort. The Democratic goal with these voters is to keep Republican winning margins to manageable levels, in the 12 to 15 percent range, as opposed to the 30-point margin of 2010 — a level at which even solid wins among minorities and other constituencies are not enough to produce Democratic victories.

“It’s certainly true that if you compare how things were in the early ’90s to the way they are now, there has been a significant shift in the role of the working class. You see it across all advanced industrial countries,” Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said in an interview.

In the United States, Teixeira noted, “the Republican Party has become the party of the white working class,” while in Europe, many working-class voters who had been the core of Social Democratic parties have moved over to far right parties, especially those with anti-immigration platforms.

Teixeira, writing with John Halpin, argues in “The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election,” that in order to be re-elected, President Obama must keep his losses among white college graduates to the 4-point margin of 2008 (47-51). Why? Otherwise he will not be able to survive a repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63-33.

Obama’s alternative path to victory, according to Teixeira and Halpin, would be to keep his losses among all white voters at the same level John Kerry did in 2004, when he lost them by 17 points, 58-41. This would be a step backwards for Obama, who lost among all whites in 2008 by only 12 points (55-43). Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate.

The following passage from “The Path to 270” illustrates the degree to which whites without college degrees are currently cast as irrevocably lost to the Republican Party. “Heading into 2012,” Teixeira and Halpin write, one of the primary strategic questions will be:

Will the president hold sufficient support among communities of color, educated whites, Millennials, single women, and seculars and avoid a catastrophic meltdown among white working-class voters?

For his part, Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist and a key adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, wrote a memorandum earlier this month, together with James Carville, that makes no mention of the white working class. “Seizing the New Progressive Common Ground” describes instead a “new progressive coalition” made up of “young people, Hispanics, unmarried women, and affluent suburbanites.”

In an interview, Greenberg, speaking of white working class voters, said that in the period from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, “we battled to get them back. They were sizeable in number and central to the base of the Democratic Party.” At the time, he added, “we didn’t know that we would never get them back, that they were alienated and dislodged.”

In his work exploring how to build a viable progressive coalition, Greenberg noted, he has become “much more interested in the affluent suburban voters than the former Reagan Democrats.” At the same time, however, he argues that Republican winning margins among white working-class voters are highly volatile and that Democrats have to push hard to minimize losses, which will not be easy. “Right now,” he cautioned, “I don’t see any signs they are moveable.”

Teixeira’s current analysis stands in sharp contrast to an article that he wrote with Joel Rogers, which appeared in the American Prospect in 1995. In “Who Deserted the Democrats in 1994?,” Teixeira and Rogers warned that between 1992 and 1994 support for Democratic House candidates had fallen by 20 points, from 57 to 37 percent among high-school-educated white men; by 15 points among white men with some college; and by 10 points among white women in both categories. A failure to reverse those numbers, Teixeira warned, would “doom Clinton’s re-election bid” in 1996.

Teixeira was by no means alone in his 1995 assessment; he was in agreement with orthodox Democratic thinking of the time. In a 1995 memo to President Clinton, Greenberg wrote that whites without college degrees were “the principal obstacle” to Clinton’s re-election and that they needed to be brought back into the fold.

In practice, or perhaps out of necessity, the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008 chose the upscale white-downscale minority approach that proved highly successful twice, but failed miserably in 2010, and appears to have a 50-50 chance in 2012.

The outline of this strategy for 2012 was captured by Times reporters Jackie Calmes and Mark Landler a few months ago in an article tellingly titled, “Obama Charts a New Route to Re-election.” Calmes and Landler describe how Obama’s re-election campaign plans to deal with the decline in white working class support in Rust Belt states by concentrating on states with high percentages of college educated voters, including Colorado, Virginia and New Hampshire.

There are plenty of critics of the tactical idea of dispensing with low-income whites, both among elected officials and party strategists. But Cliff Zukin, a professor of political science at Rutgers, puts the situation plainly. “My sense is that if the Democrats stopped fishing there, it is because there are no fish.”

“My sense is that if the Democrats stopped fishing there, it is because there are no fish.”

— Cliff Zukin.As a practical matter, the Obama campaign and, for the present, the Democratic Party, have laid to rest all consideration of reviving the coalition nurtured and cultivated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal Coalition — which included unions, city machines, blue-collar workers, farmers, blacks, people on relief, and generally non-affluent progressive intellectuals — had the advantage of economic coherence. It received support across the board from voters of all races and religions in the bottom half of the income distribution, the very coherence the current Democratic coalition lacks.

A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food.

The better-off wing, in contrast, puts at the top of its political agenda a cluster of rights related to self-expression, the environment, demilitarization, and, importantly, freedom from repressive norms — governing both sexual behavior and women’s role in society — that are promoted by the conservative movement.

While demographic trends suggest the continued growth of pro-Democratic constituencies and the continued decline of core Republican voters, particularly married white Christians, there is no guarantee that demography is destiny.

The political repercussions of gathering minority strength remain unknown. Calculations based on exit poll and Census data suggest that the Democratic Party will become “majority minority” shortly after 2020.

One outcome could be a stronger party of the left in national and local elections. An alternate outcome could be exacerbated intra-party conflict between whites, blacks and Hispanics — populations frequently marked by diverging material interests. Black versus brown struggles are already emerging in contests over the distribution of political power, especially during a current redistricting of city council, state legislative and congressional seats in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.

Republican Party operatives are acutely sensitive to such tensions, hoping for opportunities to fracture the Democratic coalition, virtually assuring that neither party can safely rely on a secure path to victory over time.

President Barack Obama’s fundraising in Ohio is down about $200,000 from four years ago, and the state’s Republican chairman attributes the difference to voters’ frustration with the president’s job performance.

According to a Columbus Dispatch analysis of a study completed by the Center for Responsive Politics, the Obama campaign has only about two-thirds as much money as it did at the same point in his first presidential run.

Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine said Obama was elected on the promise of “hope and change” but claims his “job-killing regulations and mandates have left Ohio families and job creators with less hope and a lot less change.”

The Obama campaign, however, says the numbers don’t tell the full story. The difference this time around is that Obama is not campaigning against several Democratic contenders, campaign organizers said.

“Ohioans continue to show strong backing for President Obama and his agenda,” said Obama for America spokesman Tom Reynolds. “Across the state, we have a broad base of grass-roots supporters, which is in stark contrast to the way other campaigns are running their operations, planning to rely on millions of dollars from Washington lobbyists and other special interests.”

The campaign says that even though the Ohio numbers are down, the national numbers have doubled over the past four years.

ABC News' Jake Tapper confronts White House press secretary Jay Carney over President Obama's schedule which has included a lot of traveling. Citing a Wall Street Journal article about the number of times President Obama has traveled to swing-states, Tapper bluntly asks Carney if Obama is "campaigning on taxpayer dime."

"President Obama seems to travel to battleground states more so than any other president before him. Am I'm wondering if you could respond to this. It looks like the president is campaigning on the taxpayer dime more than any other president has done," Tapper said at today's White House briefing.

"I reject the premise of that," Carney responded. Carney said since Obama "expanded the political map" by winning some red states, so many more states are considered "purple" or swing-states now. Carney also said that there is "logistical" decision making when the White House plans to travel.

Carney is then asked by CBS News' Mark Knoller if politics isn't the motive then what is, causing the press secretary to give a bumbling answer.

MSNBC is the Obama re-election campaign team 24/7. Madcow in the WH 5 times already w Bama?

Obama and Liberal Intelligentsia Shed Dignity Ahead of 2012 Election Russ Smith While the President dithers and hides, media enablers plead for votes from his disappointed ’08 supporters.

..Barack Obama has yet to add a “killer rabbit” incident in his growing list of parallels to Jimmy Carter’s failed presidency, and his quiver of good luck arrows isn’t so depleted that he’s attracted a principled Democrat to mount a challenge for the Party’s nomination, but as 2011 dwindles away into holiday distraction, the erstwhile political magician is running out of gas. That’s Obama’s car in America’s ditch right now, and the owner shows little interest in repairing the damage. At least the hapless Carter, when Teddy Kennedy announced his primary bid in late-1979, had the gumption and competitive spirit to tell anyone who’d listen that he’d “whip [Kennedy’s] ass. Obama, on the other hand, appears listless and bored, and is apparently counting on winning a second term as the lesser of two evils.

Three years ago, after Obama’s historic election, even those who didn’t support him would undoubtedly be astonished that America’s supposed savior would remain on the sidelines as the bipartisan “super committee” failed last week, perhaps purposely, to reach any sort of compromise on deficit reduction. Perhaps his political advisers told Obama to vanish—even though it was certain that the outcome would shatter the financial markets—and make plain that he’s taking the low road of blaming Republican extremists (“obstructionists” as they’re called, as if no Democrat has ever stymied a GOP president’s program) for the ongoing economic crisis until next November. This doesn’t square with the heady first months of Obama’s tenure, when he was described by delirious journalists as a combination of FDR, JFK and Abraham Lincoln, a man who’d be remembered by historians as a “transformative” president who nullified the damage his predecessor caused during the previous eight years.

Why wasn’t Obama, in public, on television angrily insisting that the committee reach an equitable compromise or face disgrace? Why didn’t Obama, in private, emulate LBJ and threaten Democratic legislators with the loss of federal pork and the Party’s support in their own upcoming elections? It’s mystifying, really, that Obama continually eschews the opportunity to demonstrate the leadership so often promised during his ’08 campaign. As Peggy Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal last weekend, Obama’s “instincts” haven’t adapted to the entirely different political and economic culture that’s emerged since he announced his presidential candidacy four years ago. Noonan: “[E]veryone else in America knows the crash and the underlying crisis it revealed—on our current course, we are bankrupt—changed everything. Strangely, inexplicably, the president thinks the old political moves apply to the new era. They do not.”

Here’s an important fact to remember: Obama defeated John McCain (who ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in my lifetime) by 7.2 percent in the popular vote. It wasn’t a landslide: in fact, despite the enormous turnout of first-time and casual voters who rode the Obama wave, in 1988, George H.W. Bush bested Michael Dukakis (a dud, but not as incompetent as McCain) by a superior 7.7 percent. And in 1980, Ronald Reagan, dismissed by liberal pundits as a nitwit not long before the election, dispatched Carter by 9.7 percent. Unless Obama somehow rediscovers his audacity of awesomeness, a near-impossibility given the unemployment rate and his own diffidence, it’s very difficult to believe that his campaign will generate a level of enthusiasm that even approaches 2008.

Some naïve pundits predict that this fall’s wave of Occupy Wall Street protests will help re-ignite the passion for the President. That’s doubtful for a couple of reasons: one, the most vocal OWS squatters consider Obama as part of the problem and won’t vote for a man who takes money from the infamous 1%; two, there’s no way to measure the effect of the OWS movement on the population at large, and I don’t think it’s simply a hunch that for all media fawning over Zuccotti Park Camp, most Americans aren’t paying much attention, far more concerned with their own debt and job prospects.

Nicholas Kristof, an Obama apologist, is typical of the whining from the liberal intelligentsia that’s now gearing up in earnest. Writing in The New York Times on Nov. 27, Kristof conceded that Obama “badly underestimated the length of this economic crisis” and has been “surprisingly inept at communicating.” Kristof despairs that Obama is a “piñata” for liberals and conservatives alike, and hopes the former will remember all his accomplishments, such as preventing a second Great Depression (true, so far, although we have no idea whether McCain would’ve also staved off that catastrophe), his “superb” record on education (parents throughout the country might choke on that notion), “bolster[ing] regulation of the tobacco industry,” killing bin Laden, “leading the international effort to overthrow Muammar el-Qaddafi” (Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron might pass gas at that assertion) and, naturally, passing a health care reform bill that’s eluded presidents “since the time of Theodore Roosevelt.” One can, conceivably, be charitable and give Kristof wide berth since he’s abroad so often, but ObamaCare is not, understating the reality, without its detractors. I’m fortunate to have a decent health insurance plan—I stress “decent,” because it’s not the 1990s anymore—but since Obama’s signature legislation passed, my checkbook has taken a beating, as the insurance company has compensated for the full implementation of ObamaCare by getting even stingier with reimbursement for ordinary medical procedures. I don’t believe this is uncommon.

Kristof takes the trouble to quote two impartial observers to buck up the troops. Both Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Bill Clinton told the columnist that they’re certain Obama will be re-elected, even if, in Durbin’s words, it won’t be like the “first date” voters had with the President four years ago. The soothsayer either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, contact a Republican to ask his or her opinion.

Frank Rich, who mercifully left the Times for New York magazine earlier this year—and writes less frequently—recently tackled the Obama conundrum from a darker angle, claiming that the President is subject to a level of “hate” unseen since JFK’s assassination. That might come as news to George W. Bush, who, looking at Google, draws over 32 million comparisons to Nazis and Hitler; Obama rates half that number. In fact, Rich’s New York colleague Jonathan Chait, who has also cautioned liberals that the alternative to Obama would be devastating, opened a column for The New Republic in September 2003, with the words, “I hate President George W. Bush.” Chait then catalogued everything he hated about Bush, from his policies to the way he walks.

Rich devotes most of his long essay to a musing about JFK—and his presidency as a “half-remembered dream” that was “beautiful, even erotic, but somewhat weightless in content”—and the vitriol directed at him in Texas back in ’63, and though he doesn’t say it, the implication is that Obama, whom Rich finds quite similar to Kennedy in his political “centrism,” wariness of the “institutional left,” and “ardent” belief in capitalism, could be assassinated as well. Maybe so, though like the vast majority of Americans, I certainly hope not. Rich doesn’t mention that Presidents Ford and Reagan were also the victims of assassination attempts. He continues that both Obama and JFK inspired “a hatred so nightmarishly disproportionately to their actual beliefs, actions, and policies that it’s worthy of Stephen King’s fiction.

The inescapable conclusion from Rich is that Obama will run as a victim of right-wing thuggery, as opposed to a mediocrity who may persevere simply because of an unpopular opponent. In the Times last Sunday, Ross Douthat, the often indecisive conservative columnist for that paper, shoos Rich’s analysis away as if it’s the work of a hack Boomer who’s lost in the fog of Camelot. Also writing about JFK, Douthat makes the Obama comparison, without naming the current president, and says the ongoing “J.F.K.” cult matters” because “We confuse charisma with competence, rhetoric with results, celebrity with genuine achievement.”

Douthat’s not incorrect, particularly in today’s media-as-sewer culture, but I’d argue that the charisma that once defined Obama has long since evaporated, and if he does get re-elected—a not unreasonable assumption—it’ll be the result of negative campaigning and a superior organization that can somehow deliver votes. It’ll be a back-alley election, as opposed to Obama’s Yellow Brick Road journey in 2008.

NBA star Shaquille O’Neal said on Monday he believes President Barack Obama is doing a ”fabulous job” and will win the 2012 presidential election.

O’Neal, who retired from pro basketball this year, joined a handful of celebrities endorsing the Democratic president, ranging from singer Lady Gaga and actor Tom Hanks to Basketball hall-of-famer Magic Johnson.

Only 225 show up for Obama tickets in ScrantonPocono Record ^ | Nov. 29, 2011 | Michael Sadowski

When Hillary Clinton was on the campaign trail in 2008 and spoke at Scranton High School, the line to get tickets a few days before her appearance stretched about 1,000 people long.

Monday's line to grab the available free tickets to President Barack Obama's speech Wednesday was noticeably shorter — about 225 people were waiting when the doors opened for the distribution.

"It's a little disappointing to see that," said Cathy Kneeland, 64, of Scranton, who showed up more than three hours early to stand in line and found herself second. "You would think more people would want to see the president speak."

Wednesday's scheduled speech will be Obama's first stop in northeastern Pennsylvania since he campaigned for president in 2008.

Obama supporters, however, don't seem to be wavering. George Childs, 61, of Scranton, is on the front lines of the jobs debate, having been unemployed since January when he lost his six-year job as a stockroom employee. Before that, he worked at a slaughterhouse for 10 years before it closed.

"I would like to see what he has to say about jobs," Childs said from his spot first in line. "I want to see what he has to offer someone like me."

Barbara Yavuchak of Scranton said while she's "very worried" about the country, she was, like many Obama supporters standing in line Monday, blaming Republicans for blocking much of what Obama has tried to get done.

"I feel very sorry for (Obama)," she said. "He stepped into a terrible situation. But it hasn't made me not support him. I know quite a few people who have (lost faith in Obama), but I know what he's up against."

(Excerpt) Read more at poconorecord.com ...

Ha ha ha - no more throngs of deluded idiots showing up in huge numbers?

Worthington, OH (PRWEB) November 30, 2011 -- With 2012 around the corner, where do Voters stand? Nearly half (46.3%) don’t think President Obama should run for a second term while 43.5% think he should, according to the latest American Pulse™ Survey of 6,071 respondents.

Further, a majority of Voters (51.8%) don’t think President Obama deserves reelection while slightly more Independents (52.5%) share this view.

In fact, since we asked the question in March 2011, a majority of Independent Voters have felt the current president hasn’t earned a second term.

In addition, 1 in 5 Independent Voters (20.8%) think Obama should hand over the reins to Hilary Clinton instead of running for reelection.

(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at a campaign fundraising event at the Gotham Bar and Grille in New York City on Wednesday, President Barack Obama told a group of supporters he needed to win reelection next year to make sure the health-care law he signed in 2010 will actually be fully implemented in 2014 as planned.

“We still have a health care system that has to get more efficient and that has to improve its quality,” Obama said, according to a White House transcript. “And so we're going to have to implement the Affordable Care Act in 2014, and that means I've got to win in 2012.”

The law Obama signed mandates that by 2104 all must purchase a health-care plan that meets government requirements. The constitutionality of this mandate has been challenged in federal court and the Supreme Court has said it will hear the case in this session.

Mother Jones crunches the numbers on President Obama's fundraising pace, and concludes that he has averaged one fundraiser every five day in 2011:

Sixty-nine fundraisers this year by December 1. That's an average of more than one fundraiser every five days. (Though, as Obama's latest New York trip shows, these events are often clustered together on a single day.) This is a blistering pace of rainmaking for the 44th president in 2011.

Obama's fundraising activity surpasses that of predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. According to Brendan Doherty, a political scientist at the US Naval Academy, Bush attended 41 fundraisers between January 1, 2003 and November 30, 2003. Clinton attended 23 fundraisers from January 1 1995 and November 30, 1995.

1. He has a horrific record of failures 2. Economy will still be far worse than when he came to office. 3. GOP nominee will be better than mcCain 4. obama maxed out minority turnout and youth turnout in 2008 5. Obama blaming Bush only highlights his inability to fix anything. 6. People are worse off than they were 4 years ago. 7. Many of his voters will be staying home or not vote.

2012 -is going to make 2010 look like childs play. obama and the dems in the senate are gone.

1. He has a horrific record of failures 2. Economy will still be far worse than when he came to office. 3. GOP nominee will be better than mcCain 4. obama maxed out minority turnout and youth turnout in 2008 5. Obama blaming Bush only highlights his inability to fix anything. 6. People are worse off than they were 4 years ago. 7. Many of his voters will be staying home or not vote.

2012 -is going to make 2010 look like childs play. obama and the dems in the senate are gone.

Gallup: Obama’s job approval the lowest at this point for any modern president except … CarterHot Air ^ | DECEMBER 2, 2011 | ALLAHPUNDIT Posted on December 2, 2011 10:07:44 PM EST by RobinMasters

In all seriousness, it’s amazing that his numbers are as high as they are. Never in my experience has the country seemed so close to catastrophe in so many ways.

Europe could implode in weeks and sink the world into depression; Congress can’t muster the will to slow the growth of debt that’s already soared past $15 trillion and triggered one downgrade; Iran’s seemingly at a point of no return on nuclear weapons; Syria’s ready to explode all over the Middle East; the Arab Spring is turning into the best thing that ever happened to Muslim fundamentalists; and Pakistan is more Pakistan-ish than ever. (I haven’t even mentioned protracted gruesome unemployment.)

Not all of it is Obama’s fault, but you know how it is with the presidency: If it happened on your watch, you pay the price politically. That Mayan 2012 prophesy is looking better every day, yet somehow The One’s polls are still just two or three good news cycles away from being above water. Remarkable. If China invaded Hawaii tomorrow, maybe he’d drop to 40 percent.